The New Men (13 page)

In the office Martin was sitting on a chair, his arms rigid by his sides, while Luke paced from the window to the door, three stamping steps, turned, three steps to the window, like a wild dog in the zoo.

As I went in, Martin did not move, greeted me only with his eyes.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘If only I’d made the whole thing bigger!’ Luke was saying, in a grinding voice.

‘In fact we didn’t,’ said Martin.

‘How bad is it?’ I had to ask.

‘It’s pretty bad,’ said Martin.

Luke cried: ‘If only I’d made the thing fifty per cent bigger. Then whatever’s gone wrong, it would still have worked!’

‘I can’t blame ourselves for
that
,’ said Martin. His tone was bitter.

‘What do you blame us for?’ Luke stopped and rounded on him.

‘We spoke too soon,’ said Martin.

‘You mean,’ said Luke, ‘that I never know when to keep my mouth shut.’

‘It doesn’t matter what caused it,’ said Martin, and his temper for once was ready to match Luke’s. ‘We’ve got to take the consequences.’

‘Yes,’ Luke broke out, ‘you’re going to look a fool because of me.’ They both felt the fury of collaborators. The fabric of businesslike affection opened, and one saw – Martin’s anger at having been led astray, his dislike of trusting his leader too far, perhaps his dislike of having a leader at all, perhaps a flicker of the obscure, destructive satisfaction that comes to a junior partner in a failure for which he is not to blame. One saw Luke’s resentment at the partner to whom he had done harm, the ferocious resentment of the leader to someone he has led into failure. Luke was a responsible, confident man, he knew Martin had served him with complete loyalty: in disaster he was choked with anger at the sight of Martin’s face.

But those feelings were not their deepest. Each was face to face with his own disaster. Each was raking it in his own fashion. I did not know which was being hurt more.

Martin said: ‘It will give some simple pleasure in various quarters.’

He had tried to teach himself not to be proud, he had set out to be sensible, calculating, prepared to risk snubs, but there was a nerve of pride hidden beneath. Now he was preparing himself for a humiliation. He had tried to be content with little, but this time he had believed that what he wanted was in his hands; he was composing himself again to expect nothing.

To Luke, even to me, his stoicism seemed enviable. To himself, it was like an invalid pretending to feel better for the benefit of his visitors and then sinking down when they had gone.

Luke made no attempt at stoicism, less so than most men. He assumed that he was the more wretched, that he would jib more at the humiliation.

‘Why are the wise old jaw-bacons always right?’ he cried, repeating criticisms that had been made of him, dwelling on them, sometimes agreeing with them. ‘When shall I learn not to make a mess of things? If ever the jaw-bacons had a good idea, they would handle it without any of this nonsense. How can I go and tell them that their damn silly short-sighted fatuous bloody ignorant criticism has just turned out right all the time?’

Yet, though he might feel more ashamed than Martin, though he would have no guard at all when he heard what Mounteney and the others had to say, he would recover sooner. Even in his wretchedness, his powers were beginning to reassert themselves. It was frustration to him to feel those powers deprived, to know that through his own fault he had not fulfilled them; until the pile was running, he would know self-reproach like a hunger of flesh and bone; but underneath the misery and self-accusation his resolve was taking shape.

‘It was just on the edge of being right,’ he said. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t I get it quite right?

‘What is stopping them (the neutrons)?

‘Brother Rudd will have a nice sleep tonight. Well, I can’t grudge him that.

‘The heavy water is all right.

‘The electronics are all right.

‘The engineering is all right.

‘I only hope the Germans are capable of making bloody fools of themselves like this. Or anyone else who gets as far. I tell you we’ve got as near as kiss your hand.

‘
The engineering is all right
.

‘
The heavy water is all right
.

‘
The uranium is all right
.

‘
The uranium is all right
.

‘No, it blasted well can’t be.

‘
That must be it
. It must be the uranium – there’s something left there stopping the neuts.’

Martin, who had been sitting so still that he might not have heard Luke’s outburst, suddenly broke in. From the beginning they had known that the uranium had to be pure to a degree that made them need a new metallurgy. After all, that still might not be pure enough. Was there an impurity, present in minute quantities, which happened to have great stopping power? I heard names strange to me. One Luke kept repeating (it was gadolinium, though on the spot my ear did not pick it up). ‘That’s it,’ he cried.

‘There might be others,’ said Martin.

‘No,’ said Luke. ‘
That’s it
.’

‘I’m not convinced,’ said Martin.

But he was. Even that night, Luke’s authority had surged up again. Later, other scientists said there was nothing wonderful about Luke’s diagnosis; anyone would have reached it, given a cool head and a little time. What some of them did praise (even those who only passed compliments on those securely dead) was his recuperative power.

They did not see him just a moment after his flare of certainty. He knew what was wrong, he could stiffen himself to months’ more work: but there was something to do first.

He stopped his pacing, put a hand on the desk and spoke to Martin.

‘Do you think they rumbled?’

(He meant the other scientists waiting by the pile.)

‘I doubt it,’ said Martin.

‘I should have thought they must. They must be thinking that I’ve given them the laugh of a lifetime.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin.

‘They’ve got to be told.’

Martin nodded. His own face pale, he was watching Luke’s. Luke broke out: ‘I can’t do it.’ His bounce had quitted him; his active nature had gone dead.

Martin pressed in his lips.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

Then Luke took hold of the desk and shook himself, shook his heavy shoulders like a dog on the beach.

‘No, I must do it,’ he said. ‘You’ve got more nerve than I have, but you’d be too diplomatic. It’s a mistake to be diplomatic about a bloody fiasco.’

‘You’re right,’ said Martin. For the first time since I came into that office, there was a comradely glance between them.

Luke went straight to the door.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

But, as they stood in the open hangar, with the crowd between them and the pile, Luke muttered: ‘I’m going to try another reading, just on the off chance.’

Even now he was hoping for a miracle to save him. He walked, arms swinging, to the instrument bench, and once more studied the graph. He called out: ‘Take her up to .6.’ Martin stood by his side. They had been gone less than twenty minutes. There was a stir in the spectators round me, but I did not hear any word of doubt. Mary Pearson’s hair was close to the table as she read the indicator. With a slow sweep, like the movement of someone drugged, retarded but not jerky, her hand moved over the graph paper. The instant her pen point came to rest, Luke snatched the sheet from her. He glanced – showed it to Martin – threw it on to the bench – more quickly than a man could light a cigarette. He took a step forward, and in a loud, slow, inflexible voice said: ‘It’s a flop. That’s all for tonight. We’ll get it right, but it’s going to take some time.’

A hush. An hysterical laugh. A gasp. Men talking at once. Pushing up her glasses, Mary Pearson began to sob, tears rolling down her face. I caught sight of young Sawbridge, his mouth open with pain like a Marathon runner’s: for once I saw emotion on his face, he too was nearly crying.

Drawbell, Rudd, and Mounteney pushed towards the graph.

‘What is all this?’ Mounteney was asking irritably. ‘What has the k got up to?’

Rudd said to Martin: ‘Never mind, old chap. It might happen to anyone.’

‘Not quite like this,’ said Martin, looking straight into Rudd’s eyes, in search of the gloating that he expected in all eyes just then.

In the hubbub, the high questions, the hot wash of feeling more alive that men get from any catastrophe not their own, Drawbell took command. Mounting on Mary Pearson’s chair he shouted for attention; and as they huddled round him, as round an orator in Hyde Park, he stood quite still with an expression steady, friendly, undisturbed.

When they were looking up at him, he spoke, with the same steadiness: ‘Now I’m going to send you home. We’ll begin the inquest tomorrow, and I shall give you a statement all in good time. But I don’t want you to go home tonight in the wrong frame of mind. It’s true that the experiment hasn’t worked according to plan, and Luke was right to tell us so. I’m not going to raise false hopes, so I shan’t say any more about that. But I do tell you something else: that even if the worst comes to the worst, this experiment has taught us more about our job than any establishment in the world, except our friends across the Atlantic. We shall finish up better because we’ve had our setbacks. This isn’t the end, this is the beginning.’

Without a flash of his own disappointments, free from the honours receding from him that night, without tremor of
schadenfreude
at Luke’s fall, Drawbell stood there, happier with a crowd than ever with a single person, engrossed in infecting them with his own curious courage, delighted (as the complex sometimes are) because he was behaving well. It was he who cleared the hangar, to allow Luke and Martin to get back to their office undisturbed. Outside on the floor round the pile, there was soon no one left, except Nora Luke; we looked at each other without a word, unable to go away.

‘We’d better ask,’ she said at last, as we stood helplessly there, ‘whether we can be any use.’

In the office, Luke and Martin were both sitting down. As Nora saw her husband she said, awkwardly, wishing from the bottom of her heart that she could let herself go: ‘Bad luck.’

It was Martin who replied, picking up Drawbell’s speech with harsh irony: ‘We shall finish up better because we’ve had our set-backs.’

To his wife, Luke said, ‘Let’s have some tea.’

That was the first pot of tea. Nora made five others before the night ended. Like other men of action, Luke talked more as he grew more tired. What to do? – decisions of his kind were not made in monosyllables, they were made in repetitious soliloquies, often in speeches that got nowhere, that were more like singing than the ordinary give and take of talk. Yet out of that welter sprang, several times that night, a new resolve, one more point ticked off.

Meanwhile, Nora sat by, calculating for him how many (if his assumption were right) uranium slugs would have to be replaced, before the pile would run. It was a long calculation; she carried it out like the professional mathematician that she was; sometimes she glanced at Luke, distrusting herself, thinking that another woman might have given him rest. But she was wrong. His bad time was behind him, of us all he was the least broken.

As Luke talked more, Martin became more silent. He took in each new plan, he answered questions; but through the small hours lie sat volunteering no words of his own, giving his opinion when Luke asked for it, like a sensible second-in-command – and yet each time I heard that controlled voice I knew that he was eating himself up with hopes in retrospect, with that singular kind of might-have-been that twists one’s bowels because it still grips one like a hope.

As I looked at Martin, my disappointment for him, which had started anew, the instant I caught the glance between him and Luke over the graph, was growing so that it drained me of all other feelings, of patience, of sympathy, of affection. This might have been the night of his success. Now it came to the test, that was my only hunger. I had none to spare for the project; on the other hand, I did not give a thought for our forebodings with Mounteney by the river. I had none of the frustration that Luke felt and perhaps Martin also, because they were being kept at arm’s length from a piece of scientific truth. For me, this ought to have been the night of Martin’s success. I was bitter with him because it had gone wrong.

At last Luke said, his voice still resonant, that we had done enough for one night, and Martin and I walked together out of the hangar door. The sky was dark, without any stars, but in the east there was a pallor that seemed less comforting.

‘First light,’ said Martin.

I could not help myself. I broke out of control: ‘Is this ever going to come off?’

‘Is what ever going to come off?’

It was one of his stoical tricks, to pretend not to understand.

‘You know what I mean.’

Martin paused.

‘I should think your guess is about as good as mine,’ he said.

I tried, but I could not keep quiet: ‘Perhaps it’s a pity that you burned your boats.’

‘That’s possible,’ said Martin.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t sensible to invest all your future in one man.’

‘I’ve thought of that,’ said Martin.

‘Luke’s enemies have always said that he’d make one big mistake,’ I said. I could hear in my own voice, and could not hold it down, the special cruelty that can break out of any ‘unselfish’ love, of a father’s or a brother’s, with anyone who is asking nothing for himself – except that the other person should fulfil one’s dreams, often one’s self-identificatory dreams. If you see yourself in another, you see all you would like to be: so you can be more self-sacrificing than in any other human relation, because it does not seem like sacrifice: for the same reason you can be more cruel.

‘I’ve thought of that also.’

‘Is this going to be his big mistake?’ I asked.

For the first time, Martin turned against me; his voice was quieter but as bitter as mine.

‘You’re not making it any easier,’ he said.

Ashamed, suddenly stricken by his misery, I said that I was sorry, and we walked in silence, making our way towards the Drawbells’ house. We had quarrelled only once before, when I interfered over his marriage, and that had been just skin deep. Finding I could not put the words together to comfort him or tell him my regret for the past minutes, I muttered that I would see him home.